At this point it is time to go back through and check your assembly methods for:
•Diode orientation. Make sure the cathode and (the line) is in the same ori- entation as shown on the assembly diagram.
•Electrolytic capacitor orientation. Make sure the negative side of the ca- pacitors are not in the positively marked holes!
•IC orientation. Let’s hope you did this right, they are hard to move once soldered!
•Check for cold solder joints. Make sure all connections look nice and clean. If in question
•Check for solder bridges. We have seen some that look just like a trace was supposed to be there, so check thoroughly for potential shorts!
Well, it looks like it is time to hook up our peripherals and give our newly completed kit a test!
USING THE R2XL1
The operation is pretty straight forward but want to give you one bit of advise so that you won’t get frustrated. Don’t use your R2XL1 as your primary audio gain control! Since we built in a lot of gain it is too difficult to adjust on the fly. Even worse, there are two controls to tweak making it even harder to keep these at the same setting at the same time. Set these once and leave them alone. In fact you may want to put a marking on them so you can tell at a glance if someone messes them up on you.
The last thing we need to mention is the labeling of the panels for the case set. This would normally be started by a statement sounding like “A funny thing happened on the way to the print house…”. There are regretfully two er- rors on the labels that come with the case set, one on the front and one on the back. The front panel Stereo/Mono mode selection switch is backwards and the rear panel RCA Audio Input jacks are labeled backwards. We are sorry for the inconvenience but this is usually a set it and forget it type of product.
Keep in mind from the Circuit Description section, Mono mode operation re- quires feeding your audio source into the Right RCA input (labeled Left on the rear panel… sorry).
Set your levels as needed and your off to the races!